


Coffee-flavoured pecks and ChapStick kisses

by Daringdoublebassist



Series: Nat/Mia Shorts [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Injury Recovery, Maria Hill Feels, Multi, Natasha Romanov Feels, Not Canon Compliant, One Shot, Protective Laura Barton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 09:11:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13315029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daringdoublebassist/pseuds/Daringdoublebassist
Summary: Natasha nuzzled her head between Maria’s shoulder blades, before slipping around to lean into her side and grip her hand. Those icy fingers dug in hard, eking warmth, before guiding both hands into Natasha’s sheepskin-lined hoody pocket, fuzz softening the chill.





	Coffee-flavoured pecks and ChapStick kisses

Maria glanced across the control panel to her wife’s beautiful face. Her lips pursed, and eyebrows furrowed in concentration even though they’d lost their tail back in Maine. 

“Do you want me to take the wheel, Nat? It isn’t far until the next rest stop. You look tired.” 

Natasha shook her head, curls flying wildly. She’d already told Maria she needed to do something practical, that she had too much energy for a still Saturday morning. Her fingers were growing purple against the steering wheel, nails ripping at the leather casing. The car thrummed along in a gear too low for such a speed. 

“Well, even if you don’t need to stop, I need to use the bathroom.” Maria prompted, tapping the indicator so Natasha didn’t continue to fly noisly down the highway. “Look, it’s right here.”

With a sigh, her wife indulged her, and pulled into the stop. The carpark was reasonable, with an empty space near the exit. 

Maria stepped into warm sunshine. Where it had been cool earlier, the misty rain had cleared the clouds and bright rays shone through. A patch of grass nearby was steaming as the sun burned off its dew; it smelled joyously of fresh vegetables. With arms stretched above her head, and hips clicking out as Maria revolved them, she pretended not to see Natasha prying locked fingers from around the steering wheel. 

“Bathroom first, then coffee?” She called back into the car, shutting the passenger door with a thump before she could hear a response, and setting off to the service station. She put enough sway into her hips that she knew would reason Natasha to follow. Just outside the double doors she looked back, throwing long dark hair over her shoulder. Her eyes scorched through the windshield, and Natasha dutifully pulled off her seatbelt. 

It wasn’t until she was half-way down the queue to the café that she felt lithe little arms snake her waist, and a warm body press into her back. Natasha nuzzled her head between Maria’s shoulder blades, before slipping around to lean into her side and grip her hand. Those icy fingers dug in hard, eking warmth, before guiding both hands into Natasha’s sheepskin-lined hoody pocket, fuzz softening the chill. 

“You okay, babe?” It was Maria’s chance to cuddle her wife. She pressed her mouth to Natasha’s hairline, sniffing at the clean strands escaping her bobble. A kiss smeared pink, strawberry ChapStick across her forehead, but Maria said nothing. Her wife would find it later, and remember this moment. It was one of the few intimacies Natasha had allowed in recent weeks. Ever since-

“What can I get you?” Their place in the queue startled Maria. She had not realised they were still moving forwards. Not missing a beat, her wife ordered their usual and handed the server a pre-paid credit card. 

The drinks were ready and waiting by the time they pushed their way through occupied tables to the far end of the counter. Natasha took both and made a sharp beeline for the only empty seats. When a man pushed by her to get to it first, Maria thought she may cry.

She was fairly weepy even sitting on the better option Maria had promised outside: a worn bench overlooking the grass verge and the ever-rising dawn. With a sleeve pulled over her right hand she swiped at her eyes, dislodging remnants of mascara from the day before. She flinched when Maria reached to pick a blob off her cheekbone. 

“Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologise for.”

Natasha sniffed, sipping fiercely at her hot chocolate. Her pupils blew wide as she trailed her eyes up to the sun itself. They then closed, and squeezed shut, and didn’t re-open. 

Maria shuffled closer on the bench. She pulled her wife under her arm, and chinked their foam cups together amicably.

“Happy Saturday, Nat.”

“Happy Saturday, Mia.” The words tumbled from her tight lips before Natasha caught onto the reference. Around Natasha, Maria had always been slightly awkward in her greetings. 

“Our first date was a very happy Saturday, for me.” 

Natasha sagged a little closer, resting her head against Maria’s shoulder. 

“For me, also.”

Maria added a coffee-flavoured peck to the ChapStick kiss. 

“I have never beaten you at ping-pong since.”

Maria did her best not to shift in her surprise. This was progress. For weeks, Natasha had not volunteered to speak lest Maria prompted her first. 

“And those were very good hot dogs.”

“They were.” Maria turned her head and met her wife’s iridescent green eyes. Natasha’s orbs were beacons, guiding Maria in every way. She was the lighthouse that got her through every storm. She worried that she wasn’t as good in that respect when Natasha needed guidance. That was partly why they were travelling to the farm rather than making a video call. 

A little sniff brought her gaze back downwards. No longer purple, the icy fingers had evened off into a whiteish-pink, like the foam candies Maria devoured as a child. They clutched at the cup, her nails making little indentations in the foam. 

Natasha shivered. Her skin shone pale, and her normally plump lips seemed thin and cracked in the morning air. Where Maria wore only a t-shirt and light blazer, Natasha was bundled into two jumpers and her wife’s leather jacket. It was comically large on usually, but over so many sweaters, looked almost a perfect fit. 

Her coffee was finished before the hot chocolate. She used this excuse to lever her way into the driver’s seat. Natasha, tense and reluctant, took the passenger.

It wasn’t until a few miles down the highway that Maria began to alter Natasha’s frigid driving conditions. She turned the heated seats onto their lowest setting. She resolved the icy blasts of air-con, rehabilitating them into soothing waves of warmth. With every kilometre or so, Maria further adjusted the temperature in the car.

At seat-heat setting 3, and 25ᵒC, Natasha’s body limpened. Hands stopped grasping at her hoody cuffs, and loosened muscles splayed her legs wide. She slumped into the warm seat, and Maria further adjusted the controls to cocoon her head and neck in comfort and safety.

The next thing Natasha knew was: “We’re here.”

Past noon, the sun was now dipping slowing in its course back down to ground. They left the car in a nearby paddock, and approached the buildings on foot, pausing only to greet the great carthorse named Bill. Bill was like another member of the family to Natasha, and she had often regaled Maria with stories of happy times spent torturing Clint, with this horse as her wingman. Bill was growing old now, and more inclined to sunbathing and feeding than running wild around the fields with two ex-assassins. 

As if he knew what they were there for, Bill pushed his scratchy, whiskery nose into straight into Natasha’s chest and whinnied gently. She leaned into him, whispering sweet nothings, and they left only after each procuring an apple for the wise old man. 

“Bill knows everything.” Natasha murmured, finding Maria’s gaze on her. 

Maria nodded, not willing to remind Natasha how transparent she was at the moment. 

The path continued winding its way towards the house. An inviting glow emanated from the porch. Natasha lengthened her strides, and Maria found herself trailing behind. Though Natasha reached the door first, she stopped short of opening it and walking straight inside. It was left to Maria to decide – walk in and announce themselves as traditional, despite her wife’s misgivings, or not pretend everything was fine, and just knock. 

She chose to rap her knuckles against the hard wood. Laura and Clint would know anyway when they saw Natasha. She held herself low, and bit her lip, with eyes that danced distractedly over her shoulder. Bags under her eyes and bruises peppering her jaw bone were mere footnotes to her carriage.

It was Laura who answered the door.

As far as most of the intelligence community was concerned, Laura Barton has sunk along with the crew of the H.M.S. Starfire when a traitor called her bluff and nosedived her mission. Her demise had not only left Clinton F. Barton the most eligible bachelor in S.H.I.E.L.D., but allowed him to promptly move in with Natalia A. Romanov – his long-time mission partner, and friend-with-benefits. 

At least, that was the rumour those two played up to, allowing Clint to have an address in New York though he lived across the country with his family, and giving Natasha and Maria alternate living quarters. Increasingly, that was what it was being used for nowadays – the bathroom at the apartment they had bought in the spring was still flooded, and the ceiling of the master suite had yet to recover.

It seemed there were no words Laura could verbally articulate as she pulled Natasha into a tight hug, but over her head, she screamed non-verbally to Maria. Her wife seemed impossibly small buried in the embrace of a woman who stood only a centimetre taller. Maria watched on, as she squeezed Laura’s arms, and pulled back, to allow the other two a hug. 

Not unexpectedly, Maria felt Laura breathe questions into her ear, but would not answer with Natasha beside them, staring into space, the ChapStick fading on her forehead. 

“You’re bringing me in?” 

It was the first phrase Laura had uttered that had caused Natasha to do more than nod blankly. Up until now, the greetings, the welcomes, the ‘can I take your coat?’s and the ‘did you have a good journey?’s seemed to have gone over her head. They were now perched on the comfy slouching sofas, clutching mugs of foaming coffee, but Maria wasn’t sure that her wife had even recognised that. 

Laura, to her credit, had not yet commented on Natasha’s state. But that didn’t mean she was going to let their request slide.

“Girls, I have a family now.”

“We have a cat.” 

Maria almost snorted at her wife’s admission. But she didn’t want to startle her into staying quiet. She had done that before, unintentionally, at Natasha had not spoken for 36 hours. 

Laura looked as though she did not know whether the declaration was a genuine attempt at empathy, or a joke. She refilled Natasha’s cup, and offered Maria a top-up. 

“We understand if you don’t want to,” Maria told her, idling her fingers under Natasha’s jaw bone. “It’s just that we do need you, a little bit.”

“I miss my boss.” 

Laura gave her such a soft smile, that Natasha began sniffing and hid once again behind her hoody sleeve. 

“What do you need me for?”

Maria felt Natasha slide into her lap, and pulled her close almost unconsciously. She relished the warm, soft, heaviness and kissed her wife’s temple. 

“Thor speaks All-Tongue, but without him, there’s no way for us to translate other-worldly languages.” She let Natasha fiddle with the ring on her left-hand. “You’d be learning some very alien languages, but as back-up onl-”

SLLASHM. The backdoor opened and crashed back against its frame, plastic windows rattling in their wooden panes. And Natasha was up, faster than Maria had time to catch her, leaping over the back of the sofa, to press her back up against the far-wall. 

This time, Laura did speak.

“Clint, Nat and Maria are here.” She called out, eyes steady on Natasha’s trembling form. Maria did not move to stand, but turned her head slowly to look at her wife. 

Clint entered the room leisurely, a broad smile growing on his face, until he saw his partner cowering by the television. Then it faded, and he spoke the question Maria and Laura had not released from their lips.

“What’s happened, Nat?”


End file.
